May 15, 1968
Page 13384
STATE GOVERNMENT AT THE CROSSROADS – ADDRESS BY MR. BRADY BLACK
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, recently I was privileged to speak to a regional conference of State legislative leaders and newspaper publishers who were meeting in Baltimore, Md., to consider ways and means of improving State legislatures. Mr. Brady Black, vice president and editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer and a member of the board of trustees of the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures discussed the role of State legislatures in our Federal system.
The State legislature's task–
He said– is to do the wisest job the citizens of the State will permit it to do ...
He asserts:
Citizens, in their fear of big government, protect themselves so carefully against government at home that they permit central government to grow greater and greater while protesting that it does so.
Many of us share Mr. Black's concern. I have the pleasure of serving on the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations along with two other Members of this body, the Senator from South Dakota [Mr. MUNDT] and the Senator from North Carolina [Mr. ERVIN].
The Advisory Commission has devoted much of its attention to finding ways and means of strengthening State and local government. Modernization of State legislative operations is sorely needed. Indeed, some observers contend that State legislatures are the weakest link in our Federal system. The Advisory Commission has urged States to hold annual sessions, to offer adequate compensation, to provide year round professional staffing of major committees, and to devise more effective ways for making the views of State legislatures known to Congress.
Mr. Black's frank and perceptive comments merit thoughtful consideration by all Members of Congress. I ask unanimous consent that his address be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
STATE GOVERNMENT AT THE CROSSROADS
(Remarks of Brady Black, vice president and editor, the Cincinnati Enquirer, before Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference on Strengthening the Legislature, February 14-15, 1968, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.)
The role of the American state legislature in relation to present day federalism is to do the wisest job the citizens of the state will permit it to do in the state's partnership with local government and with the Federal government.
I say permit because citizens, in their fear of big government, protect themselves so carefully against government at home that they permit central government to grow greater and greater while protesting that it does so.
They protect themselves with constitutional restrictions and they protect themselves with overlapping local governments.
The American Assembly, when it concluded a meeting of 76 Americans on state legislatures on May 1, 1966, issued a statement which suggested elimination of limitations on a legislature's power to appropriate funds, repeal of the right of referendum and initiation where reserved by the people, and establishment of legislatures as continuing bodies with the power to call themselves into action. In short, state legislatures would be allowed discretions similar to those of Congress.
Such a broadening of state legislative authority may be beyond our times. This is because voters, unable to get at Washington directly with restrictions on debt and spending and legislation, are damned if they're going to give another layer of government such unrestricted access to their purses, in those places where they still can use the ballot to say yes or no.
Therefore, the direction of legislative change has been to annual sessions, to increased staffing, to greater independence of the executive, to four-year and staggered terms, to fewer committees, to increased competition, to adequate space and to modern equipment.
Let me point to two recent examples of the hesitancy of citizens to give legislatures less citizen restriction on spending.
Kentucky in 1966 tried a massive overhaul of its constitution. This included a sharp scaling upward of the $500,000 limit on debt unless voter approved. The issue was clobbered.
In Ohio last spring, citizens were asked to set up a bond commission with powers to develop and finance a master plan for state growth. The program would have bypassed the $750,000 limit on unvoted debt. The issue was smashed.
Now, having raised a doubt that citizens are going to give state legislatures power equal to that of Congress, let us review currents which may influence change, including financing state governments – while holding fast to the right to say no.
CITIZEN UNREST AND DISSATISFACTION
A great deal of dissatisfaction and unrest today is directed toward Washington. Where there is dissatisfaction., there is greater willingness to change and change spawned in great social upheaval is likely to be sweeping. Areas of dissatisfaction include:
The war
Washington is forced to give priority to Vietnam, which is costing $2 to $2½ billion a month and which is frustrating because we are an impatient people and there seems to be no end in sight.
Big city riots
The Federal government is blamed on the one hand because it is spending money in Vietnam instead of on big city slums and on the other for arousing expectations among Negroes for quick solutions to problems which defy quick solutions.
Crime
Crime menaces the safety of the individual and of his property. The courts, spurred by U.S. Supreme Court rulings, seem to be increasingly tolerant of criminals. Discontent again is directed in large part toward Washington.
Strikes
When strikes interfere with the welfare and the convenience of the people as a whole, the people look for a scapegoat. Big everything causes eyes to turn toward big government, which is Washington, and the massiveness of labor disputes sometimes adds to the grumbling.
High Prices
Inflation is pushing up prices and the housewife notices this when she goes to market. At the other end, the farmer argues that his prices are too low. More causes for unrest.
In today's discontent and citizen restiveness, there is opportunity for government closer to home to look for ways in which it can tackle and solve problems, and thereby build its standing with the people.
In some cases, however, state government lacks the tools and in some cases it lacks the boldness.
It is in this atmosphere that the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures is stimulating interest in American state legislatures so that the state citizens committees, wherever motivated, can work to strengthen their legislatures.
This we can call a present-day trend. There are other trends, too.
Consider, for instance, the prominence governors among Republicans being considered as likely prospects to oppose President Johnson next November. We hear Romney of Michigan, Reagan of California and Rockefeller of New York mentioned quite often and sometimes Rhodes of Ohio. A former governor, Wallace of Alabama, is leading a challenging third force.
Governor once was a springboard to President, but hasn't been since our country became a super-power at the end of World War II. Since the last governor in the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt, we have had three U.S. senators and one general.
State voters, while they have shied off from giving blank checks for state spending, have been generous when the use was specific. Ohioans, since Jim Rhodes became governor more than four years ago, have approved more than $1 billion in bonds and will be asked for $850 million more this year. Pennsylvanians last year passed a large bond issue.
California's legislature in 1967 imposed $1 billion in tax increases and Ronald Reagan still rides tall in the saddle. Ohio added $200 million a year in taxes in 1967 and Jim Rhodes continued popular.
In Washington, Congress is taking a stronger hand in shaping spending programs and, in at least one instance – the anti-crime program – was inclined to go along with block grants to the states.
WHAT LEGISLATURES FACE
What are the problems which legislatures must face, with or without new tools from citizens?
Education is a major one. The action of Ohio's legislature in 1967 can be looked to for clues.
In Ohio's school districts, as in others in other states, property owners have been in rebellion against carrying so much of the burden for education. Whereas once the vote yes was almost automatic for bonds and for operating levies, nos began to show up, campaigns of opposition to emerge, and financial crises to occur.
This rebellion occurred as there were more children to educate, increased pressure to pay higher salaries or be unable to find enough teachers, more demands for special education to meet slum problems, and a drive by parochial schools to get taxpayer help.
Governor Rhodes, safely into a second term and with a two-term limit, eased off his no-new-taxes policy under education's pressures and the result was that a newly apportioned legislature, with a heavily suburban influence, increased taxes and gave most of the new revenues to local school districts and state-supported universities.
It gave parochial schools at least a tentative beginning in use of tax funds by appropriating $15 million for school auxiliary services in which such schools can share. This is the subject of a constitutional challenge in a state court. Supplementary funds were provided for extra attention in big city poverty districts and for vocational education. The increased state aid did not head off teacher demands, however. Cincinnati has just gone through a teacher strike.
Welfare is the source of another immense pressure on state legislatures and one which will grow.
Contrast Ohio's handling of this question to its handling of education. The combinations of Federal, state and local effort have been meeting only about four-fifths of what is considered the minimum standard for subsistence under Ohio programs.
Pressures for greater state effort built up from county welfare recipients through marches on the state capital, and from state organizations.
The result was that the legislature appropriated $17½ million of an estimated $70 million needed to get to 100%, and made available another $17½ million provided local governments will match it $2 for $1.
You can read into this a wariness against getting the state too deeply committed in welfare.
I think there are several reasons for this. One is that suburban legislators are representing areas to which many white taxpayers have fled and still are fleeing from central cities that are filling up rapidly with black tax consumers moving in from agricultural areas and frequently without education and training for jobs. These are the people of the so-called black ghettos, in some of which riots have been occurring. The suburban dwellers, beset by their own problems of schools, sewers, trash removal and mortgages, are reluctant to assume the costs of solving city problems.
Add to this, the ruling last year by a three judge Federal court that Connecticut's residency requirement for Aid to Dependent Children is unconstitutional because it discourages the right of interstate travel, and you have a potential tripling of the costs of public assistance on the present aid base.
Almost 8 million depend on public assistance and the annual cost, at all levels of government, is $7 billion, which is double the cost of 10 years ago. Yet numbers fail to qualify under residency rules and the waiting period may be a factor which slows down migration to the cities. Immediate qualification certainly would open up some growth potentials.
Concern already is being expressed that the welfare system locks the poor in dependency, develops generations of welfare clients, attracts the untrained and uneducated jobless to further augment the restless slums, and influences the taxpaying whites to go on fleeing to the suburbs.
In state after state the governor has had to dispatch the National Guard to cities to help restore order and in Michigan even this wasn't enough and battle-hardened Federal troops were sent in.
Ohio, while it was wary in 1967 of getting the state too deeply committed in welfare costs, continued this year in preparing to handle riots if they should come next summer.
Efforts generally are directed toward making it simpler for the governor to respond quickly in an emergency and for authorities to contain rioters, to cut off sale of alcohol and to restrict sale of gasoline.
I suspect that before summer there will be provisions for shifting of National Guard troops among the states and for airlifting of Federal troops when a governor calls for help.
The states, and the cities, face a very grave test of whether they can maintain order and whether, if they do, they can avoid drifting into a police state.
You know there is more than one way our country could go. A state of anarchy could develop in which citizens would not be safe. Or revulsion against disorders could bring the rise of a Hitler-type. The state legislature is under pressure to be a factor in seeing that neither occurs – that instead we solve our problems and maintain order.
Local government aid
Ohio, when it came to considering appeals from local governments for greater financial help, responded cautiously on welfare and otherwise simply authorized additional areas of taxation if counties and cities want to use them.
Municipal governments have shown a growing inclination to run to Washington for help because:
A. The Federal income tax and unlimited borrowing have made the funds available.
B. The mass urban vote can and does decide presidential elections and therefore programs are devised to attract voters.
C. Legislatures, with an experience of quick reprimands at the polls for raising taxes and with election bases which encourage avoidance of some city problems, have tended to seek ways to avoid rather than to rush in with panaceas, which is the reverse of Federal experience.
There are, however, evidences that this may be beginning to change.
For one thing, a new breed of governors who are boldly seeking solutions has come on the scene as a shocked citizenry begins to wonder whether all answers do lie in Washington. They, too, have masses of urban voters and some of them have ambitions which lie beyond the governor's mansion.
Legislatures, altered greatly by reapportionment, are showing responsiveness to the seeking of solutions to problems, but members will be cautious about going beyond the political comprehension and depth of their constituents. This a political fact of life.
This is taking place amid a growing pondering that there must be something which badly needs fixing when rioters burn our cities, criminals make our streets unsafe, and when even policemen, firemen and teachers are going on strike – against us, the taxpayers.
Whether you are a learned man from a university faculty, a day-to-day educator and opinion influencer from the news media, a lawmaker or a civic leader, you know that something is wrong and somebody ought to do something about it.
For, unless something is done about it, however much you might prefer the status quo of yesterday, yesterday is history.
And doing something about it includes preserving the state as a strong part of the Federalist system.
You know and I know that there is every indication that the urban sprawls will get bigger, that the confusion of overlapping governments will remain, that the tax users will go on inundating the central cities, that the taxpayers will go on fleeing to their suburban outposts, that the tax users will go on flexing their political muscles as they demand more government money, that riots or the threat of riots will continue to come from the militant, that police will be armed to the teeth, that soldiers will be called upon to defend Americans against Americans in our cities, and that suburban and rural lawmakers will hesitate to vote upon their constituents the costs of city problems from which they have fled.
This, of course, is the point of challenge for each of us. What are the solutions? How can our Federalist system be strengthened as a partnership to find solutions and to put them into effect.
What can we do to help?
The American state legislature, unless it is strengthened by citizen guidance and support, is likely to give its attention to education, to public health, to parks and recreation, to highway building and highway safety, to helping enforce the law in emergencies – all worthy causes – but to back off and leave to Washington the massive and high cost problems of American cities – poverty, crime, housing and the black power riots.
It is these problems which are tearing us apart. Since we have gotten into today's grave crisis while weakening our state and local partners in our Federalist system, it seems to me that it is time that we tried to restore some of their power.
The American state legislature is an integral part of such a partnership, but it needs citizen help and backing if it is to play its fullest role.
For, as I noted when I opened these remarks, the role of the American state legislature in relation to present day federalism is to do the wisest job the citizens of the state will permit it to do.